CodeGear polishes Delphi jewels

CodeGear, Borland Software's tools subsidiary, has added support for Windows Vista and PHP to Borland's Delphi integrated development environment for Windows.

The new Delphi for PHP marries the open source Visual Component Library (VCL) for PHP 5 with Borland's object oriented language to bring RAD-like component-based development to the world of scripting. Among Delphi for PHP's features are 50-out-of-the box re-usable components along with AJAX integration and integration with MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server and InterBase databases.

Delphi 2007 for Windows 32 features VCL support for Windows Vista's Aero interface, dialogue boxes and files, in addition to adding VCL for AJAX. Also featured is support for the MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server and InterBase databases.

Pricing is designed to target individual developers. Delphi for PHP costs $299 for new users with an introductory $249 offer, while support is $99 - the current industry sweet spot for developers. Delphi 2007 for Windows 32 Professional starts at $899 per new user, with an introductory offer of $399, while Enterprise edition starts at $1,999 with an introductory price of $1,299.

Much has been written about CodeGear, which Borland tried - and failed - to sell as an independent business. Attention is focused on how CodeGear plans to stop Borland's tools users from migrating to Microsoft or Eclipse - and then how it will actually grow its business.

So far as Delphi for PHP and Delphi 2007 for Windows 32 are concerned, CodeGear has a partial answer to the former. Delphi represents $50m in revenue, so updates to existing tools for Windows Vista and scripting are a no-brainer.

The challenge comes in convincing Delphi users they want to build scripting applications and persuading the scripting kids they should bother with the increasingly dated Delphi for PHP or Delphi on Windows, Linux or Mac at nearly $300 and $2,000 a pop. ®